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ON SlifTGLEIsrESS OF EYE 



i)|i iiactdanu^afe SictitUE, 



PREACHED BEFORE THE 



COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, 



JUx\l{ 22, 1873, 



By JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL,D , 



PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE. 



PRINCETON: 

McGINNESS & RUNYAN, BOOKSELLERS, 

OPPOSITE FIRST CHURCH. 

1878. 






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% 



ON SINGLENESS OF EYE 



mmth Mtmm. 



PREACHED BEFORE THE 



COLLEGE OF XEW JERSEY, 



JUNE 22, 1873, 



By JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LED., 

PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE. 



PEINCETON : 

McOINNESS & RUNYAN, BOOKSELLERS, 

OPPOSITE FIKST CHURCH. 

1873. 



v^^^ 



JAN 21 1921 7 



I 



SERMON. 



'^ The light of the body is the eye : if, therefore, thine eye be 
single, thy whole body shall be full of light -, but if thine eye 
be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If, therefore, the 
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" — 
Matt vi., 21. 

" If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether 
it be of God."— John vii., 17. 

The light, or rather the lamp, of the body is the eye. What 
a lamp does to a house that the eye does to the body — shows 
the objects within, and enables the indweller to move and act 
freely, as it is expressed (Luke xi., 36), ^^ As when the bright 
shining of a candle doth give thee light." We are commanded 
to have the eye single, as opposed to the eye that sees double, 
generally to a diseased, an evil eye. We may consider first 
the evil eye, and then the single eye, and in both regard it as 
looking to the two things spoken of in the text in John, to the 
doctrine we are to believe and the duty we are to perform. 

The Double Eye, the Evil Eye. — No organ of the body is 
liable to more diseases than the eye. It is so because of the 
complexity of its structure, from its many coats, humors, and 
nerves, and from its extreme sensitiveness and delicacy. I 
have seen models in w^ax of upward of one hundred diseased 
forms which the eye of man may take, and these do not by 
any means exhaust the number. But the mind, which is the 
candle of the Lord, and is more fearfully and wonderfully 
made, is liable to a greater number of perversions. The two 
eyes are so constructed as to see things single and upright, 
but they may be so dislocated as to see everything double, so 



diseased as to perceive everything in a perverted form or a 
false color, so blinded as to leave us in darkness. It may be 
the same with the eye of the mind. 

It is one of the worst effects of the commission of sin that 
it injures the whole soul, just as disease, just as fever or con- 
sumption, weakens the whole body ; it has a tendency to 
damage the acuteness of the mental vision, and to impart to it 
a fatal obHquity. The moral sense, being abused, loses its 
sensitive perception and delicate touch, .and does not fulfill its 
purpose of discerning between good and evil, and warning us 
of the evil. He who has yielded to sin of any kind once, is 
more liable to fall into it a second time. By companionship 
and familiarity he loses the abhorrence which he at one time 
had for it. Having crossed the line that separates vice from 
virtue, he concludes that a few more transgressions may not 
much aggravate the offense, and he wears the rut out of which 
it will be difficult to move him, he wears the channel down 
which the stream will continue to flow. He who has told one 
lie will be tempted to tell a second lie, were it only to conceal 
the first. The youth who, after an evening of sinful excite- 
ment, has gone to bed without praying will feel reluctant to 
pray next morning, as he would have to begin mth confessing 
the sin of the previous night ; and, henceforth, the morning 
comes, bringing with it new blessings, but no expression of 
gratitude on the part of him who receives them ; and the eve- 
ning comes, after an ungodly day with its load of cares, with no 
confession of sin to relieve the spirit. He who has once yielded 
and fallen into the intemperate or unclean act, will find his pas- 
sions fomented and his power of resistance diminished and the 
whole man becoming the slave of lust. A man^s weak point is 
that at which he has yielded — is the limb which he has broken 
in a fall, is the member which has suffered from disease. At the 
place where the vessel has been cracked it will be most apt 
to break j at the point where the dam has burst it will ever 



afterwards be most apt to give way and the waters will rush 
out in an irresistible torrent. Every one knows that if we 
once give money to bribe a troublesome accuser, we are here- 
after at his mercy and must yield to ever increasing demands. 
Such is our lamentable position when we have given way to 
sin ; we have accepted the price, and are henceforth subject 
to him who first tempts and then torments. 

This is the origin of prepossession and prejudice. You 
know that the sagacious Bacon found the causes that had 
hindered science for long ages in certain idols — idola. objects 
of false worship to which we are tempted to bow, eidola, falsQ^ 
appearances that mislead us — and he warns us against antici- 
pating nature, instead of following the observations of its 
operations. What the great founder of the inductive philosoc 
phy discovered in the history of science we may find in the 
working of the human mind and in the practical affairs of 
life. There are prejudices gendered which prevent us from 
discovering the truth, and which turn aside that love which 
we should entertain towards God and our ;t'ellow-men. The 
eye which was meant to see objects single, now sees them 
double and out of shape. Certain things, such as God and 
duty, pass very much out of sight, and certain other things, 
such as the pleasures and honors of the world, bulk out of all 
proportion. Our Lord, in the verses immediately following 
the text, gives, as an example, the man who, instead of serv- 
ing God with singleness of aim, makes an attempt to serve 
both God and Mammon. A vain attempt, for ^^ either he will 
hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one 
and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." 
One of the lamentable results of this spirit is that the man 
becomes incapable of discerning between truth and error, be- 
tween good and evil. He has trodden so many paths, all 
leading in different directions, that now he cannot tell which 
is the right one. He has lied so often that he does not know 



6 

what is the truth. He has been so long and laboriously em- 
ployed in deceiving himself that now he cannot deal honestly 
with himself. Paul says of men^s consciences that they accuse 
or else excuse one another (Rom. ii., 15) ; to defend them 
from an accusing conscience men learn to excuse themselves, 
and they do evil, maintaining it to be good. Like the color- 
blind railway conductor, he cannot distinguish the signal of 
danger from the signal of safety, and rushes on, without being 
aware of it, into destruction. He comes at last to call good 
evil and evil good, thus mistaking light for darkness and 
darkness for light. At length the devil enters into him, as he 
did into Judas Iscariot, and he assumes the attitude of a rebel, 
and declares that he does right to rebel. 

Such a man often takes up the position that he is not 
responsible for bis belief. In particular, he claims that he 
can not possibly be made to believe some particular truth of 
natural or revealed religion. True, he may not be responsi- 
ble for his belief to his fellow-man. Man is responsible to 
man for his convictions only within very narrow limits — only 
so far as these convictions go out in evil acts or expressions. 
But he is certainly responsible to God for his belief, as well 
as for his desires and actions. But he says that he can not 
believe so and so — that, for example, he can not believe that 
God will ever punish any of his own creatures. And it may 
be true that, in his present state of mind, he cannot believe it. 
But there is a previous question — Is he in the right state of 
mind ? Has he not brought himself to such a condition that 
he can not consider the question candidly 1 The man under 
strong passion and deep disappointment, while in such a state, 
declares that he does right to be angry. So the man w^ho has 
rolled sin as a sweet morsel under his tongue can not be made 
to believe that God will punish sin in him or any other — that 
he can not see the truth arises from a disease which he has 
himself produced. His incapacity to believe is an aggrava- 



tion of his crime, not an alleviation of it. ^^ Every one that 
doeth e\'il hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, 
lest his deeds be reproved." Paul says that before his 
conversion, '^ I verily thought with myself that I ought to 
do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, 
which thing I also did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints 
did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the 
chief priests, and when they were put to death I gave my 
voice against them." It was not till after he was prostrated 
and blinded on the way to Damascus, and had his eyes after- 
wards opened, that his spiritual vision was rectified and pm^i^ 
fied to discern the right. 

The lamentable issue of the whole may be that the man 
becomes spiritually blind, given up to a hopelessly infati*- 
ated mind. This is the last stage of a sinful process which 
has lono: ^one on. The lio-ht within thee has become dark- 
ness, and then how great is that darkness ! It is the rejec- 
tion of the light that is the sin. ^^ If I had not come and 
spoken unto them they had not had sin, bait now they have 
no cloak (or excuse) for their sin." The light has blinded 
them, and they see everything in a black hue, and they be- 
take themselves to a region of darkness. They prefer the 
darkness to the light, because their deeds are evil. It is not 
the man born blind that is so much to be pitied, for he never 
saw the light of day, the beauty of plant or animal, or the 
smiUng face of a friend 5 it is the man who once saw, but is 
now blind, that is to be commiserated. The brute is not to 
be condemned, because he is not capable of distinguishing be- 
tween good and evil ; the condemnation rests on the man who 
prefers the darkness to the light, because his deeds are evil. 
How pitiable the condition of such a man ! The mind and 
conscience become defiled, and the unclean find everything 
unclean, for they defile all they touch. The conscience is 
'' seared as with a red-hot iron," and loses all sensitiveness of 



touch. You may allure the man by the most attractive con- 
siderations, but he will not listen to the voice of the charmer^ 
charm he ever so wisely. You may describe the loveliness 
of virtue and holiness^ but you meet with no response in his 
bosom. You may tell him of Him who is the chief among ten 
thousand and altogether lovely ; but he sees no beauty in Him 
that he should desire Him. None so blind as those who will 
not see j none so wicked as those whose hearts have been 
hardened by a grinding process till they have become hard 
as the nether millstone. The man becomes at last incapable 
of distinguishing between light and darkness^ of discern- 
ing between good and evil. It is the last stage of disease, in 
which there comes on an insensibility, called expressively 
mortification^ the certain precursor of death, followed by a 
resurrection of unrepented sins, which become the worm that 
dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. 

The Single Eye. — And here the first question is. How is 
this singleness of eye to be got ? For, when any one begins 
to reflect and to put this question, he finds that he has already 
sinned, and so far lost his power of clear vision. How is he to 
recover it ? By a terrible fall he has sunk to a lower level. 
How is he to mount again ? It is as difiicult for him to do so, 
as it was for our first parents to get back into Paradise ; a 
flaming sword is seen turning every way to guard the approach. 
There are two courses opened to the man who has sinned. 
One is to harden their necks, as the Scriptures graphically de- 
scribe it^ and go on heedlessly in the course on which they haA'e 
set out. The other course is to surrender at once, to confess 
the past sin, to turn back and seek a new spirit. The latter 
is the method specified and dwelt upon in Psalm xxxii. It 
may seem a curious one, yet it is the heaven-devised one, and 
the only one fitted to accomplish the end. We have to begin 
with acknowledging our sin, with bringing it out and slaying 



it, and thus getting rid of it forever. Observe the effect 
when sin is not confessed, when it is bound up in the bosom, 
there, like a cancer, ta eat ever inward. ^^ AVhen I kept 
silence mv bones waxed old, through ray roaring all the day 
long; for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me, my 
moisture is turned into the drought of summer.'^ But how dif- 
ferent when the sinner prostrates himself before Grod : '^I ac- 
knowledge my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. 
I said 1 will confess my transgressions unto the Lord ; and Thou 
forgavest the iniquity of my sin.'' And observe the blessed- 
ness : '^ Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose ^ 
sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord im- . 
puteth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile." 
The process is repentance and forgiveness ; the issue " a- 
spirit in which is no guile." You have seen an angry sky 
discharge itself in showers, and then smiling upon the refreshed 
landscape. Such is the effect of the soul being reconciled to 
God. The evil humors have been let out, and the body be- 
gins its healthy exercise. The conscience,, the law in the 
heart is satisfied, for God, the lawgiver, is pacified ; and the 
soul, freed from lashings and slavish fear, is ready to enter 
on a course of new obedience. The debt is paid, the load is 
lifted off, and the man walks in freedom. This is the Gospel 
plan of imparting a single eye. We part with the old and 
get the new. When the waves of the ocean are raging and 
cannot rest, how are we to allay them ? It is of little use 
contending with them, of no use commanding them, for they 
laugh at our impotent efforts, and toss off all the restraint we 
would lay upon them, and cast them as mire and dirt upon 
the shore. But let the winds of heaven cease, and then the 
waves of the ocean will soon cease. So, let God be pacified 
towards us, let His anger be turned away, let His face smile 
upon us, and these tumultuous passions will soon rock them- 
selves to rest. 



10 



He who has thus cast out the beam from his eye, and got 
his spiritual perception restored, is ready to receive light from 
every quarter, arid he gets light. " When the eye is single 
the whole body is full of light.'^ Even in scientific investiga- 
tions, a sincere desire to discover the truth is the most effective 
means for finding it.. It is Bacon who says that a man can 
enter the kingdom of nature in no other way than he enters 
the kingdom of grace, by becoming a little child. And, in 
moral and spiritual matters, it is not great intellect or great 
learning that is the best preservative against error and secur- 
ity for reacting certainty, but a sincere, a candid, a truth- 
seeking, knd truth-loving spirit. The truth seeker is sure to 
be the truth finder, provided he seeks for it as for hid trea- 
sure, and is ready to value it when he finds it. The wish is 
father to the thought. It is so ordered .in this world, that in 
moral matters we commonly get what we look for, though 
possibly not in the way we expected, or by the means we 
employed. He who wants to wander will be allowed to wan- 
der ; he would have it so, and it is so. We can explain this 
psychologically. The heart has an influence on the head. 
When we love a particular object, that object will continually 
present itself, to the exclusion of other objects which we do 
not love. When we are bent on a particular course, all the 
arguments in its behalf, all the advantages likely to follow 
and the means to secure the end will continually press them- 
selves on the attention. All this, by the well-known law of 
mental association, according to which, what we prefer — that 
for which we have an appetence or affection — is most apt to 
come up frequently and readily before the mind. It is thus 
that the evil that we love and cherish will mislead us, as cer- 
tainly as '^ evil communicg-tions corrupt good manners." On 
the other hand, he who seeks the good way will find it. God 
will lead '^ them forth by the right way, that they might go to 
a city of habitation." 



11 

Such is the law of man's nature appointed by God. Exactly 
corresponding to it is the method of God's procedure. They 
that seek the Lord shall find Him. God is the fountain of 
light, and the light shines on the eye that is open and looks 
toward it. ^' What man is he that feareth the Lord ? him shall 
He teach in the way that He shall choose." ^' The secret of 
the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will shew them His 
coven;§int." Yes, God makes known His will, not to the proud 
who af e made to stand afar off, but to those who humbly seek 
him. ^' 1 thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, be- 
cause Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,^ 
and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so. Father, for so 
it seemed good in Thy sight.'' Jesus, when' on earth, did not 
reveal Himself fully to the unbelieving Jews. He made Hira^ 
self known most comfortably to His disciples, and to them as 
they were able to bear it. ^'It is given unto you to know the 
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not 
given."- He spoke more explicitly to certain humble be- 
lievers than even to the Apostles. When the woman of 
Samaria came, by the leading of Jesus, to say, '' I know that 
IMessias cometh, which is called the Christ, and.wKen He is 
come he will tell us aU things," then Jesus avowed, " I that 
speak unto thee am He." When the' question was put to the 
man born blind, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? and he 
was able to answer sincerely, ^^ Who is the Lord, that I might 
believe on him Jesus declared, *.' Thou hast both seen Him, and 
it is He that talketh with thee." 

And here let us observe the close connection betweeri 
these two things — between knowing the doctrine and doing 
the duty. If we do not know the doctrine, how shall we 
know what is duty? We may mistake and do what is wrong, 
believing it to be right. We are not to give in for one in- 
stant to the wretched fallacy of those who say that we may 
pay no attention to doctrine — duty is all .we need to look to ; 



12 



as if doctrine were not in many cases needful^ to enable us to 
understand what is duty. One end served by the perform- 
ance of duty is to raise ns, as a reward^ to the contemplation 
of higher doctrine. But it is equally true that it is when we 
are doing the duty we are able to know the doctrine, whether 
it is of God. You complain that there are doctrines proposed 
to you apparently in God's word, that you do not see your 
way to accept. In such a case we may surely ask you, for 
the present, to suspend your judgment and not reject them. 
Meanwhile, there are other truths you profess to believe ; 
well, then, j)roceed to act on them, and act immediately and 
consistently. As you do so and walk on you may get new 
views of some of the doctrines of which you were in doubt, 
and know whether they are of God. When yoa, students, en- 
tered on your studies at school or college, did you see all that 
they would lead to ? It was as you advanced that you discov- 
ered what literature, and philosophy, and history, and science 
were fitted to open to you. Had you drawn back at the en- 
trance, because you did not see the end, you would have been 
left with uncultivated minds and in ignorance. So in all 
matters of faith and practice, ascertain first that you are 
entering on the right path, and then walk on, and new 
views on the right hand and on the left will o-pen to you as 
you advance. 

Accept the truth and follow it out. It is a truth of science 
that you are asked to believe. Ascertain, first, if it is a truth 
of science, sanctioned by induction, and not a mere fancy or 
plausible theory; and if it is so, then receive it. But then, 
you say, it is not consistent, with religion ;' and you ask, 
Which am I to give up — my Bible or science? I answer, 
Give up neither. But, you say, you do not discover the con- 
sistency. Oh ! but is thy great intellect fitted and intended 
to discover the consistency of aU truth ? Canst thou so much 
as tell how thy soul is united to thy body — the thinking part 



13 



to the material! The t^vo may turn out to be consistent, 
whether thy mole's eyes can see it or no. There was a time 
when people^ pious and impious, thought Laplace's theory of 
the heavens inconsistent with religion. Now, every scholar 
sees, or may see, that there must be an ordinating power 
above, bringing such order out of what was once without form 
and void, as Scripture describes : ^' The earth was without 
form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep ; 
and the Spirit of Grod moved on the face of the waters." 
When Darwin maintains that there is development in Nature, 
that there is a law of natural selection, that there is a ten-* 
dency in the fittest to survive, he is uttering truth in thorough 
conformity with Scripture, which everywhere proclaims that 
there is development in the kingdoms both of nature and 
grace : that useful things are fostered, and noxious things 
avowed to become fewer and disappear. But if any one 
maintains that development can be carried on without the 
power of God, that there is nothing in Nature but develop- 
ment, that development does not imply something original 
out of which the development has come, and a process requir- 
ing to be arranged by a divine mind, and that there is not in 
man a thinking and responsible soul, as well as a material and 
organized body, he is setting himself not only against religion, 
but against natural observation and all philosophy. Darwin 
himself knows this, and has been calling in a vague pangenesis 
or universal life to account for what his development theory 
does not even appear to explain. This pangenesis is a vague, 
meaningless expression for the great spiritual power working 
in nature and above it, and without which we can account for 
nothing. Hold by the truths of science, but beware of pre- 
mature hypotheses and crude theories which overlook vastly 
more than they look at ; but hold, at the same time, by the 
truths of religion. There is a curious story told (1 Kings 
xiii.) of a prophet being sent to denounce the judgment of 



14 

heaven on the idolatrous altar at Bethel. He was to eat no 
bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the way he cam©. 
But he was allured aside to his destruction by an old prophet, 
who said, ^^I am a prophet, also, as thou art." Beware of 
these men, whatever they call themselves, be they scientists, 
or literateurs, or speculators, who assume the air of infalli- 
bility and would draw you away from what you know to be 
the truth of God. "" He that belie veth will not make haste." 
Holding by the truth of Scripture, he believes that' in the 
end all the truths of science will be found in accordance 
with it. 

As he thus moves on, he may be in darkness for a time, 
having no light. But, sooner or later, a light will arise to 
guide him, as the star did to the seekers of wisdom from the 
East ; and it will conduct you to the very place where truth 
is to be found — not, it may be, in the form which you expected, 
but the very truth of God, revealed to man, and before which 
you pour out the incense of a true heart, more precious than the 
gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh presented from, the 
riches of the East to the infant Kedeemer. There will be 
times when he feels as if he were hemmed in by insuperable 
mountains, but a way will unexpectedly open. He may not see 
the end of the path, but he sees the opening, and it is enough. 
And as he moves on in this pass — up, it may be, a steep 
ascent — suddenly he emerges on some Alpine top, where, 
with the blue heaven above him, he looks abroad on an 
expanse of hills and vales, of plains and cities stretching 
away before him, and bounded only by the boundless sky. 
And he cherishes the hope that, like that sun which he sees 
setting, when the time of his departure comes, his spirit will 
career on far beyond the horizon of time, with bright worlds 
ever opening on the right side and on the left, till he stays at 
last at the foot of the eternal throne of God. 

So much for doctrine. A few words as to duty. Young 



15 

men are apt to feel as if they could command their destiny in 
this world by their abilityj their skill, their prudence, their 
energy and perseverance. That these qualities are valuable^ 
that they tend to bring success, is undoubted. Still they do 
not secure it. The youth forecasts for himself a bright and 
glorious futui-e — he will be rich and honored. But how many 
circumstances, over which he has little control, must concur 
before he can gain even such inferior ends as these ! Or, to 
put it more pointedly, how many things may occur to frus- 
trate his design ! He plans wisely, but an unexpected event 
occui's. He might meet it ; but an unreasonable, ungrateful 
man opposes. He might defeat all this ; but he is visited with 
ill-health at the very time when his strength was needed to 
make one great exertion. After gaining victory after victory, 
he is defeated, with nothing left him but complaints which 
irritate him — like Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage, like 
Napoleon nibbling at his cage in St. Helena. Many an able, 
many a brave man is thus left in the end, stranded at 
the entrance of the harbor which he meant to enter so 
triumphantly. 

Let us follow the history of these two youths setting out 
on the journey of life — the one taking counsel of himself, the 
other taking counsel of Grod. Both prosper for a time ; but, 
as years roll on reverses come, enemies assail them, friends do 
not stand by them, and a sudden catastrophe overwhelms and 
crushes them. When they come to this pass, is there no differ- 
ence between the two — between the one who trusted in himself 
and the other who trusted in God? There is, after all, a mighty 
difference — far greater than the difference between outward 
failure and success. The one has no pleasant reflections ; 
his confidence was in his own wisdom, and it has failed him ; 
and he has nothing left but his folly to brood on ; and he com- 
plains of chance and fate — powers which will not listen to him 
any more than the winds of heaven and the waves of the 



16 



ocean. All he can say is, ^^ They have taken away my gods 
which I made, and what have I more 1 " But the other has 
far more left than has been taken from him. He has acted 
for the best, and he has the consciousness of rectitude, and he 
floats like the lily upon the flood. He left the issue with Grod, 
and he kilows that God will, somehow or other, bring him out 
of his difficulties. ^' To the upright there ariseth light in the 
darkness.'^ 

But, then, it is urged by some one, there are many who 
succeed in this world, and I hope to succeed. Look, then, to 
these two other young men, acting in much the same way as 
the other two, but with difl'erent issues ; for both prosper and 
reach riches and honors. But is there no difference between 
them ? There is a vast difference, far greater than if the one 
had failed and the other succeeded. The most miserable men 
I have met with in this world are those who have toiled all 
their life, and sought by selfishness and crooked policy to 
earn wealth and fame and pleasure, only to be obliged to say, 
^' Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! '^ They find that the eye 
is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing, nor the 
lust with gratification, nor the ambition with success, and they 
have nothing else to fall back upon ; and, in the midst of 
wealth, they feel themselves the poorest of men. Ths other 
never set his heart on this world ; he has had aU along other 
sources of enjoyment, which sanctify the Mammon of unright- 
eousness, and enable him to turn it to a good and profitable 
account for this life and the life to come. 

When any one is passing through an unknown country, it 
is of great use to have before him a prominent object on which 
to fix his eyes, and by which to guide his movements. They 
who traverse the ocean have the sun or a star above them, 
unmoved by winds or waves, and by which to steer their 
course. So it should be with those on the journey or 
voyage of fife : they should have an object above them and 



abiding^ on which to fix their eyes ; thej should have the 
law of God and the glory of God as ends which they keep 
constantly in view, and this will give a constancy and a con- 
sistency to their path. At times the Christian may feel as if 
he were in the position of the Israelites, with. Pharaoh behind 
him and the Red Sea before him; but he hears the voice 
addressed to him to go forward, and as he goes forward he 
finds the waters receding and the depths of the sea made a 
way for God's people to pass in. There may be times when 
he is perplexed by darkness and beset by storm, bnt he casts 
out anchor, and waits for the morning light and the calm; ^ 
meanwhile, though moved, he is " not much moved," and he 
is ready to go on with the first favorable breeze. At first he 
may feel the course irksome^ but habit will make it pleasant ;*- 
and he will reach the state which Aristotle represents as the 
sign of a perfected habit, in which the irksomeness ceases and 
the work becomes easy and pleasant throughout. 

He who cherishes this spirit will find himself pursuing a 
steady and consistent course. He walks in the straight line 
which is the shortest distance between two points. He gains 
the confidence and can secure the help of his friends, who 
always know where to find him — that is, in the path of integ- 
rity. The foul breath of calumny will not rest on a character 
thus bright, thus strong as steel. He who is thus trained 
finds his soul coming more and more into unity with God, and 
he does the will of God on the instant, as if instinctively. As 
two clocks placed on the same wall, at first somewhat diverse 
in their movements, come to give the same time ; as two 
friends, say husband and wife, at first somewhat different in 
natural disposition, come by constant fellowship to feel alike, 
so the heart of the believer comes at last to beat responsive 
to the will of God. A harmony is thus established, and they 
correspond as the shadow on the dial on earth follows the 
movement of the sun in the heavens. 



18 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : With you I have 
been connected by special ties such as can never be formed 
between me and any other class. You were the first class 
entering College after I became President. I have watched 
over your progress with intense interest. Nothing impleas- 
ant has happened in your history from the time of your 
entrance until now^ when we are about to send you away with 
our imprimatur upon you. I cannot remember at this moment 
an act of any member leaving a painful impression in my 
memory — anything that would prevent me from meeting you 
in our future lives with pleasure, or from welcoming you as 
friends, should you come back, as I hope you may, to visit us. 

We can now see in the older classes the influence and 
effect of the improvements which the college authorities have 
been seeking to make in the last few years ; of the modifica- 
tions and enlargements in the course of study ; of the more 
systematic examinations and the stopping of unfair means at 
competitions j of the effort, already crowned with a large 
measure of success, to abolish the degrading customs of Amer- 
ican colleges ; and of the encouragement given to learning by 
prizes and fellowships. There has been, I hope, an increased 
spirit of study in the various classes, and a larger amount of 
reading. There are in this class a number of as studious and • 
bright youths as ever graduated at this institution, and we 
look forward to their future career with confident expectation. 

You have come to an epoch in your lives. You had to 
pass through a crisis when you entered college. You have 
reached, now that you are about to leave it, another crisis. 
You may make this as profitable a Sabbath as ever you spent 
within these walls, by looking back on the past and gathering 
lessons from its memories, pleasant or unpleasant — lessons of 
encouragement, lessons, it may be, of humility. You will be 
grateful to God and man for the meansof improvement enjoyed, 
for the knowledge of words things, and for the principles which 



19 



have been instilled in science, mental and physical, in morals 
and religion, and for the training through which you have been 
put, fitted to invigorate the faculties, to refine the taste, and to 
fit you for the active duties of life. Some, in the course of the 
survey, may be made to feel as if they could gather lessons 
from their very failures, from their want of system, their 
want of diligence, their want of earnestness ; and your res- 
olution this day will be to profit by your mistakes. You will 
realize that you have now to start upon a new field and a more 
formidable competition. Let those who stand highest know 
that the contests in which they have engaged and the victories 
they have won are merely the drill to prepare them for that 
battle of life which they have now to fight. The laurels we^ 
place on your brows are meant to be an encouragement for you 
to go on and earn fresh ones -, and if you neglect this they will 
soon wither and be felt to be an incumbrance. In the race of 
life he who stops short is liable to fall headlong j and there 
will be some here stirred up by their very disappointments, 
to resolve that those who were least shall be greatest, and 
those that were last shall be first. 

My special anxiety is that you do now set out on the jour- 
ney before you, bent on knowing what is right and determined 
to follow it whithersoever it may lead you. If this be not 
your purpose, I have fears of you, whatever be your talents or 
attainments. If this be your resolution, formed in a strength 
that does not fail, I have no fears of you. 

It is a time in which some of you have to choose a profes- 
sion in life or enter upon a profession. At such a season 
there will usually be a strange combination of confidence and 
yet of diffidence — the confidence may be the more manifest to 
the spectator, but there will be a diffidence felt to be the 
undermost and the deepest by the young man himself. There 
will be hopes, never to be fully realized in this world j perhaps 
there will be fears, never to be altogether fulfilled ; and where 



20 



the event implies separation there will be sorrow which a 
youthful pride seeks to conceal. It is certainly an era in that 
young man's life, and this whether he acknowledges it or no : 
he had to look forward to it, and often will he have to look 
back upon it. It is a time fraught wdth vast consequences. 
While the young are altogether unconscious of it, their char- 
acter, their habits, and with these their whole destiny are in 
the course of being determined. Just as their bodily frames 
are taking that particular shape w^hich they are ever after to 
retain, so their tastes, inclinations, and principles. may be as- 
suming, imperceptibly,- that particular form and set which 
they are to keep through life — through the present life and 
the life to come. 

In the very choice of a calling young men should have a 
respect to the law and glory of God, declining those employ- 
ments which are unlawful or unholy, which are injurious to the 
best interests of humanity, or which may bring an exposure 
to temptations w^hich it is most difficult for human nature to 
resist ; and they should be sincerely anxious to choose that 
profession to which they seem to be called by native taste or 
talent, or in which they may be most useful or best promote 
the glory of God. Ah ! it is too seldom that at such a season 
there is a sense of dependence on God. In these matters the 
young are apt to feel as if they were independent, not only of 
man, but of God himself. And yet, at such an epoch, moment- 
ous above every other, there should be a waiting on God, and 
much consultation, as it were_, with him. It is because they 
enter on the business of life in a God-despising spirit of self- 
dependence that so many make shipwreck of honor, honesty, 
character, reputation, and a good conscience, and descend so 
rapidly the road to ruin. Again, in entering on the duties of their 
selected occupations, the young should ask a special blessing 
of God, make a solemn dedication of themselves to him, re- 
solve to conduct all their business, not with eye service, as 



men pleasers, but as the servants of (jrod and in accordance 
with the unbending principles of integrity^ and to employ 
their earnings and their acquired influence for the good of 
man and the glory of God. 

At such a time the youth should seriously inquire 
whether he is not required to make a special dedication of 
himself to the service of God. "■ The field is the world," the 
'' harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few ; '^ and in the 
case of some of you a father^s counsels and a mother^s prayers, 
and the dedication which you made of yourself to God, and 
events in providence, and the very voice of God, by His word" 
and spirit, may be saying to you, ^' Go to-day and work in 
my vineyard." This is a call not to be carelessly set aside, 
but to be prayerfully attended to. There are surely some 
young men here who have a desire to live for a great and a 
good end, not for the mere purpose of making money or reach- 
ing a certain worldly eminence, but aiming at nothing less 
than to leave the world wiser and better than they found it. 
This is no mean or paltry ambition to be ridiculed or repress 
ed; if it be but sanctified it may be the seed which, cherished 
for a time in the secret heart, is in due season to come forth 
as a noble tree which will afford food and shelter when we 
ourselves are slumbering in the tomb. 

Youhave to go out from this place into a world in which there 
is a keen contest between truth and error, and you must be pre- 
pared to take your part. However we may account for it, our 
world has been from the beginning an arena of contest, a suc- 
cession of darkness and light, of night and day : first of 
warring elements, according to Laplace^s theory ; then of 
warring animals, and a struggle for existence, and the strong- 
est and fittest prevailing, according to Darwin's theory. There 
is still a war between the conscience and the passions in the 
breast of man ; between the flesh and the spirit in the breast 
of the Christian 5 between truth and error ; between purity 



and pollution in the world. I wish you to realize, in starting, 
that it is into such a world you are now to enter, through 
such a wcrld you are to find your way. In this contest the 
decisive battle was fought in the middle of the human aeon, 
upwards of 1,800 years ago, and we have to continue the 
contest as soldiers under Him who then gained a victory — 
an earnest of the final and complete victory. 

It is a contest between truth and error. The error takes 
different forms in different ages. The contest is now a fun- 
damental one — not about the outposts, but for the very citadel ; 
not about this truth or that truth, but as to whether there be 
any truth above what can be discovered by the senses. It is 
as to whether man is made after the image of God or after the 
image of the lower animals. It is not about metaphysical 
subtleties, but whether man has a soul spiritual, responsible, 
and immortal ; whether we have proof of the existence of any 
other world than this passing one. In going into such an 
arena you must be prepared by intellectual discipline and 
must take a firm stand and show courage, otherwise you will 
be thrown down and have to roll in the sand amidst the jeers 
of men. I believe that in this conflict you will often fall back 
on the great fundamental truths — scientific, philosophic, and 
religious — which you have been taught in this college. For a 
century and a quarter Princeton has defended the truth, oppose 
it who might, and she confidently expects of the sons she now 
sends forth that they will in their day act the part which 
their fathers did in their day, and, as good soldiers, stand 
valiantly for the faith on which our hopes are founded. 

Then you are going forth into a world in which there is a 
contest betweeen pollution and purity. Various parties will 
approach and address you. Pleasure will come in gay attire 
and with smiles upon her countenance and flattering words on 
her lips, and she says, '•^ Youth is the season of enjoyment ; 
come with me for a little while, now that all these college toils 



23 

are over, and I will throw open to you everything on which 
your heart is set ; and afterwards, when the shades of evening 
are gathering around you, you will find it more pleasant to 
seek for the joys of a better world.'' The world, too, comes 
with its profits and its riches, its rank and honors, and holding 
them out before you it recommends to you the things that are 
seen as infinitely to be preferred to the things which are un- 
seen. Lust, too, comes, with painted visage and gorgeous 
dress to cover her loathsomeness, and with the attire of an 
harlot : ^^ She is loud and stubborn, her feet abide not in her 
house 5 now she is without, now in the streets arid lieth in wait 
in every corner; and she says to tlie simple, Therefore came I 
forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found 
thee. With her mucb fair speech she caused him to yield, Tvith 
the flattering of her lips she forced him,'' Indolence, too, 
comes, with easy gait and languishing air, and tells him not to 
be over anxious, that in the meantime he may take some rest 
in the heat of the day, being sure that a cool evening will come 
in which he will find it agreeable to work. Pride, too, comes, 
with looks of lofty pretension, and suggests that there is some- 
thing too mean and humiliating in these conditions which 
Christ requires of him, and exhorts him to remain contented 
with his present state. With all these parties clamoring in 
the ear of youth, they are apt to pay no attention to another, 
also pleading, and in far sweeter accents, if only they will listen 
to Him. ^^ As He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice 
to be heard in the street," there is a risk of His being over- 
looked. Yet there He is, standing at the door of our hearts 
and saying, ^' If any man hear my voice and open the door, I 
wiU come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." 
Setting out on the right path, in the proper spirit, and 
trusting in the unfailing aid, be not so anxious to seem good 
as to be good. I have known students in college making an 
elaborate preparation to deceive at an examination, only to be 



24 



detected and exposed; wliereas, if they had taken the same 
pains to master the subject^ they would have been successful. 
Many fall into a like mistake in life ; to save appearances, 
they make efforts which would have secured the reality, 
which has always a good appearance. Be not so desirous to 
gain eminence as to gain character, so that they may say of 
you, '^ This is the honest lawyer, the honorable merchant, the 
faithful physician, the godly pastor " — this may turn out to 
be the best way to gain eminence. Let not your grand aim 
be to obtain riches, or fame, or honors ; these may be as likely 
to come to you, not when you are seeking them, but seeking 
the sound principle and the good name which are best fitted 
to bring them. 

Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : We send you forth 
with our imprimatur upon you. You will feel that you have 
to sustain the reputation of this ancient college. We send 
you forth with our good wishes. We send you forth with our 
earnest prayers that the blessing of the God of our fathers may 
rest upon you. " The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil ; 
He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy go- 
ing out and thy coming in, from this time forth, and even for- 



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